The Bushism, “Internets”, might no longer be a joke, and have its revenge. The single, global internet network, The Economist, warns, is under pressure from both the wrong and right kinds of competition.

Should the network become a collection of proprietary islands accessed by devices controlled remotely by their vendors, the internet would lose much of its “generativity”

, warns Harvard’s Mr Zittrain. Innovation would slow down and the next Amazon, Google or Facebook could simply be, well, Amazon, Google or Facebook.

American and European companies have vied for centuries, through all of China’s upheavals, to dominate what used to be called “the China market.” Now, increasingly, China wants to keep that market for itself.

It opened up to foreign companies in the 1980s and 1990s not because it believed in free trade or because it thought the visitors were wise and wonderful, but rather because it wanted their technology and know-how. But China no longer needs the multinational companies as it once did. The Chinese government has proved ever more adept at running an industrial policy that privileges its own companies, many of them state-owned.